


Vicious Cycles

by Kablob



Category: RWBY
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Manipulation, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 20:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17874281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kablob/pseuds/Kablob
Summary: Beware of strange women who offer you everything you've ever wanted.Or: Cinder recruits her Scarecrow, Woodsman, and Lion.





	Vicious Cycles

 

This thief was proving to be much more than met the eye.

Her name was Emerald Sustrai. She had lived on the streets of Windpath for most of her life, like so many other stray youths used as pickpockets by the city’s crime syndicates. Her parents, who she spoke of with bitter reluctance, hadn't been a factor since she was very young; whether they’d died or abandoned her, she wouldn’t yet say.

She had a secret, a gift. It had taken a minimum of plying and prying to for Cinder to learn how the girl pulled off her impossible heist. _Individual Mental Hallucinations._ It was a rare semblance. After assurance from Cinder it was fine, she’d demonstrated it for her. Even knowing that what she saw was an illusion, it took a great deal of concentration for Cinder to break through it. It was a rare talent, and Emerald’s use of it was basic, amateurish, underdeveloped. She used it merely to give herself an edge in her immediate survival, but in the right hands it could make her a god.

She was afraid. Everything about her screamed it. Emerald Sustrai was made of defense mechanisms upon defense mechanisms. Her first impulse was always to run. To blend into the shadows, create a distraction, make herself invisible. That was sensible of her. She was at the bottom of the world, and she knew it. She was too thin—not emaciated, not starving, but a string of bad breaks away from it. There was a hunger in her eyes, and not merely for food. Envy at the uncaring world around her, yes, bitterness, yes. But something softer, too. More desperate. This girl wanted something more than mere survival. The thing she most desired, Cinder soon realized, was something intangible that she’d gone her whole life without. Recognition. Care. Affection.

Emerald wanted to be loved. 

She hid it under layers of acquired bitterness, cynicism. She did not want to trust Cinder. She accepted gifts warily, assumed she would somehow have to pay for them. Food got her to talk, but only after she’d eaten it—the girl wolfed down the meals like she was afraid Cinder would snatch them away from her.  But as Cinder soothed her fears, told her how clever she was, how talented, she could see something begin to shift in her mannerisms. She was still afraid, still wary when she looked at Cinder...but there was a spark of hope there too. That maybe, just maybe, she was a thief in a fairy-tale, a plucky hero saved by someone who walked into her life and gave her everything she’d ever dreamed of. That maybe she wouldn’t die in a gutter after all. She was afraid to believe that could ever truly happen to her...but she wanted to all the same.

If Cinder could make Emerald love her, she’d be hers forever.

* * *

This was not what Cinder had expected to find.

She needed an extra edge to be absolutely sure of victory when taking on the Fall Maiden. Hiring a professional assassin like Marcus Black for the job seemed perfectly logical. This had been meant to be a simple trip into the mountains of Anima, in order to barter for a simple service.

A burning cabin, a dead body, and a boy beaten bloody was not simple.

But Cinder was nothing if not adaptive. She chose her words carefully, and before long it became clear what she had stumbled across. A boy raised to be a weapon, who had lived his entire life in that cabin with his father, brutally trained to follow in his footsteps. A boy who, it was clear, had finally surpassed his teacher.

Mercury Black was not what she had expected to find. Not at all. He was better.

 _What’s in it for me,_ he had asked, giving her a wary look, and Cinder had told him in no uncertain terms. He could brave the wilds on badly-injured legs with nothing but the clothes on his back, or he could come with her. She offered him safety. A chance to put his skills to the test. A place to be. A _purpose_.

He was a lot like Emerald, in a way.

But only up to a point. Mercury didn’t want love from her. Mercury had no illusions as to the nature of their relationship; he saw her as someone who wanted to use him. For most people this would be a deal-breaker, but Mercury didn’t _care_. He was made to be used, after all; his father had drilled that into his head. He could see no reason not to align himself with the first person to come along and offer him a job. Emerald dreamed of a better life, but Mercury knew that this life was all he’d ever have.

Cinder could work with that. She didn’t need his devotion. Just his obedience.

The first stages of a plan were starting to come together in Cinder’s mind. Mercury adjusted well to his new legs in time, after his infected wounds necessitated amputation. Very high-end prosthetics, customized to his fighting style. Not something he could have ever afforded on his own. Another thing to tie him to her, another reason for him to remain in her service. Mercury was a practical boy. Logical. He would never bite the hand that fed him, so long as that hand wasn't curled in a fist.

Emerald, meanwhile, seemed to finally be understanding her place. Cinder had told her in no uncertain terms when she’d protested against bringing Mercury on full-time: this was _not_ a partnership. Cinder would _not_ refuse a gift like this in order to spare Emerald’s petty jealousy. _Jealousy,_ as if the stupid girl thought she was owed Cinder’s undivided attention. What right had she to be jealous? She should be happy with what Cinder gave her, because without Cinder she would be _nothing._ Emerald had taken the chastisement to heart. She didn’t know how to live without Cinder now—the fear of abandonment, it turned out, was enough to keep her in line. She was a creature of emotion; she responded to Cinder’s emotions to an almost obsessive degree.

Two children, skilled and clever and loyal to her. Find a third, and _well…_ that was the makings of a Huntsman academy team, was it not? Enlist Lionheart’s aid to enroll at Haven, go to Beacon as exchange students for the Vytal Festival...they could walk into the Vault of Choice right before Ozpin’s eyes and have him none the wiser, before they brought Vale to its knees on their way out. Her master loved the plan, and gave her permission to put it in action.

To do that, she needed a few more things. A contact in Vale—easily secured, once she scared a local crime boss into line. A fourth member of their team—even _more_ easily secured, for her Vale contact’s top lieutenant was a ruthless, silent woman who could pass for the right age just as well as Cinder could. And finally, she needed some easily-disposable pawns to take care of the necessary preparations in Vale, and to attack Beacon when the time was right.

The White Fang were perfect.

* * *

Cinder had learned much from her master, but Salem's most important lesson was this: if you wish to conquer a land, a city, an organization, then you find the existing fault lines and put pressure on them until they break. There was a Fang group camped in the forests and mountains outside of Vale, led by an ambitious young firebrand said to be rather extreme. Beacon’s downfall had to sow as much chaos as possible, and so making the White Fang a part of it would do quite nicely indeed for her purposes. She sent Emerald in first, to use her power to infiltrate, listen, and learn unseen. The report she came back was rife with interesting details—Taurus was covetous of Sienna Khan’s position, he had something of a misogynist streak, he was intimately involved with a devoted follower of his who was much too young for him—and Cinder had a fairly good idea of what she had to work with.

Adam Taurus was worshiped by his followers, most of whom were in their twenties or even mere teenagers. An angry, hurt bunch, with nothing to lose and everything to gain, easily led by someone who had the right words. Adam Taurus had plenty of words, and so he had convinced them that the path to their salvation lay in obeying him without question. A demagogue, proud, quick-tempered, jealous of the power he had amassed and eager for more. Someone who believed precisely none of their own rhetoric, who led his follows along on a quest that was, in truth, for nothing more than his own satisfaction. Cinder knew the type well.

He was like her, only smaller.

Her first attempt to recruit him didn’t succeed. It was her own fault, really. She had appealed to logic in explaining exactly what he could gain from an alliance, emotion in playing to his ego, telling him how valuable he was, promising to make his every desire come true. But he refused to listen to either, was too proud to follow someone like her—a human, a woman, someone with an agenda other than his own _asking_ for his _help,_ someone he thought he could bluster at and dismiss out of hand. Someone he didn’t _control_.

Cinder knew his type very well indeed; he would not take her seriously until she proved her strength. She needed to get his attention. She needed to make him  _fear_ her _._

The attack on the Fall Maiden didn’t go entirely to plan, but it left Cinder with enough power to make her point. She intimidated Taurus, stripped his bluster away, made him _listen._ She could make every fantasy of his come true no matter how outlandish, free him from any and all consequences, leave the world burning at her—at _his—_ feet. All he had to do was follow—no, ally himself with her cause.

Or she could kill him. It wasn’t hard for him to make the right choice.

Everyone chose well, in the end.


End file.
